Jaci Dawn

I read a short article online today that piqued my interest. I love mysteries, and this one is about as mysterious as a mystery can become. (I love sentences like that, too).

“Eastern Washington Hole is Shrouded in Mystery”

In short, there’s some sort of bottomless hole somewhere in Eastern Washington that goes all the way to the center of the earth (or at least halfway there), but no one can find this hole. However, it must exist because this guy named Mel Waters was interviewed on a radio program (“Coast to Coast” with host Art Bell) in 1997. Unfortunately, the area where the hole supposedly is can’t be viewed from a satellite because the military has placed a large white block on that piece of information.

Well, with that much information buzzing around in my head, I thought I needed to investigate this phenomenon a little more tonight and I really needed to blog about it.

I typed “Mel’s Hole” into my search engine (okay, I typed mel’s hole, no caps) and hit the search button. The fifth hit (fourth, if you don’t count images) proved quite interesting: Mel Waters and the Devil’s Holes.

Apparently, this hole was used as a dumping ground in an eerily similar manner as the hole in The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (except that hole eventually would fill up, but not until many years after swallowing the bones of the heroine). That’s a pretty good book, by the way, and a decent movie.

Mel’s Hole never filled up. No one could ever hear junk hit the bottom of it, either. Mel claimed it was at least 80,000 feet deep (15 miles) having used fishing line and a roll of lifesavers to determine this.

Mel wasn’t the only person to make claims about the hole. A Native American named Red Elk made claims about the hole and its properties, and he claimed the hole was a whopping 24-28 miles deep and was connected to Mt. Rainier somehow (in effect, it wasn’t all vertical drop).

The story includes Men in Black, those nifty little white lights they shine at people to erase memories, and flying saucers. OK, the nifty little white lights were in the movie with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, but the Men in Black and flying saucers figure into Mel’s Hole.

I guess the Men in Black won because Mel moved to Australia for awhile and rescued wombats. Yes, wombats. Adorable little marsupials which can leave very nasty bites on human beings that cross it (from the Wikipedia article: Humans who accidentally find themselves in an affray with a wombat may find it best to scale a tree until the animal calms and leaves.) Charming little marsupials.

Mel Waters returned to the US for some reason and ended up living among the Basque sheepherders of Nevada. Mel and the Basques discovered another hole somewhere in Nevada (and it wasn’t a mine shaft, although abandoned mine shafts are rife throughout Nevada and some of them plummet hundreds of feet straight down: my mother used to warn us as we went out the door to hike in the sagebrush to “beware of holes in the ground and rattlesnakes.” Well, she left off the rattlesnakes part because that was a given, but she always worried about one of us kids falling into a mine shaft).

How was that for a run-on sentence?

Mel and the sheepherders experimented with the new hole and – well, read the link above. I don’t want to spoil the story, but it sounds like the plot to a Sigourney Weaver sci-fi horror flick.

Of course, that hole’s location is hush-hush according to the code of the Basque sheepherders.Or else it is hidden in Area 51.

Somehow Charles Manson figures into this mystery as well: he made reference to a “bottomless pit” from which he and “The Family” would make their raids. Anyone who was old enough to read the newspapers in 1969 knows that OJ Simpson’s trial for the murder of his wife was not the “Trial of the Century”: the trial of Charles Manson and the Family for the Tate-LaBianca Murders was. Simpson just got top billing because people used to like him and he sold orange juice on television. Nobody ever liked Charlie Manson except the immediate members of The Family. And he’s ugly.

I digress.

The point is… Wait, there’s a point?

It’s a mystery. Is there a hole (or are there holes) that go deep into the center of the earth? Does StarGate exist?

One thing I can tell you for certain is this: if I ever stumbled onto a deep well that I couldn’t see the bottom of, I would *not* be even remotely interested in spelunking down into it to see where it goes. I’m claustrophobic and have a hard time going into lava tubes with my husband and family. I survived Ape Caves (another mystery story that involves Bigfoot) 0nly because I was with a group and there’s a light at the other end.

Still, it makes you wonder if there is a government cover-up or if Mel was just a really good liar.